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On relying on Tom Leopold’s comedy to prevent a suicide…

Regular readers of my journalism will remember theinterview that I did with Tom Leopold that was carried in The Catholic Herald
last winter.It was providential that
Leopold was in London – just when I requested an interview with him. He was working
on The Kumars show. For one episode, he wrote a script for Daniel Radcliffe,
which had Daniel putting an advert for a wife in The Times of India. Thousands
of interested ladies replied!

Tom Leopold got to know me last November, but as a
huge fan of Seinfeld, I had been familiar with Leopold’s work for over a decade.
Tom was the story editor on several of
the Season 3 Seinfeld episodes and set the groundwork for ‘the show about
nothing’ to become one of the best-loved sit-coms in American television. He
wrote the cult classic episodes, The Café and The Suicide, as well as co-writing the story for the Season 4 episode The Cheever Letters.

Seinfeld Episode, The Cafe, written by Tom Leopold

I discovered Seinfeld when I was 17.Watching my first episode was like watching
TV for the very first time. Nothing I had ever seen or heard had made me laugh
and forget my troubles like that 22 minute Seinfeld escape.

I started praying for Tom Leopold when I was 18. It may seem strange to pray for someone that I
had never met. I never expected to meet Leopold and be able to thank him
in person. So, when I was a young university student in Ireland, I prayed for him as
a way of ‘giving something back’.

But during my 20s, I had a much more serious reason
for praying for Leopold.As I mentioned
in the original interview, ‘years ago I got hooked on Leopold’s comedy during a dark
winter when I was pulling a suicidal friend out of a depression. I kept myself
upbeat by repeatedly watching some of the scenes that Leopold wrote for
Seinfeld…’

To be more precise, I was at the side of a young
pregnant woman who was being cruelly bullied by thugs. She wanted to die by
her own hand, by swallowing a lethal cocktail.

It was a
bitterly frosty winter, and I would spend my days with the suicidal lady, pulling her back from the abyss and encouraging her to cut ties with
the bullies who were mistreating her.

After long days with the suicidal pregnant mother,
I would be emotionally exhausted, and doubted if I had the strength to spend so
much time with someone who yearned to drink a deathly draft.

When I came home, my remedy for my hopelessness was
to watch Seinfeld, which renewed me. Most importantly, I was able to get a good
night’s sleep after watching Seinfeld Season 3. People who have cared for
pregnant suicidal women in distress know that it can be hard to sleep for fear
that the woman will ‘do something stupid’ during the night. But I needed my
sleep urgently.

At that time, I would repeatedly watch The Suicide,
the Seinfeld episode that Leopold wrote.It gave me a way of coping: the parallel black-comedy storyline about a
man who attempts suicide but fails.

At that time, when I was praying intensely for
Leopold, a room-mate of mine at the time said, ‘I can’t understand why you pray
for that Seinfeld writer. IT’S NOT LIKE ANY OF THOSE WRITERS WILL BECOME
CATHOLIC!’

I prayed for Leopold out of gratitude. To
understand my gratitude, you have to consider that I do not think I
would have pulled the young woman out of despair, had I not been able to
feed my mind with the mirth of Leopold’s comedy.

The lady survived her suicidal ideation, and she
gave birth to a lovely baby.She never
had depression or mental illness per se, but was going through a phase of suicidal
tendencies. Now, she can’t understand why she was so eager to die by her own
hand, and reflects that, ‘I don’t know what came over me. It’s like I was a
different person then’.

During the years that I was praying the mysteries of
the Rosary for Leopold, I didn’t know and never expected that he would convert to Catholicism. Some time later, I picked up a newspaper article and
saw that Tom Leopold had become a Catholic. I thought that I was dreaming. I watched an
interview that Leopold gave on the inspiration behind The Cheever Letters, and made
sure that the same writer was the one who had converted to Catholicism.

I’m not alone. Steven Spielberg relied on Seinfeldian comedy when he was making Schindler’s List. Spielberg watched
Seinfeld Season 3 during filming breaks as a way of keeping his spirits up.

This is such a breathtaking account of this unusual connection between you and Tom, and in a strange way between you and Tom and the woman you looked after, thank you. I look forward to reading the full story some day!

I read your article and was really uplifted by your commitment to a person you have never seen or met. Then, you see by the grace of GOD your efforts bear fruit is a clarion call to the rest of the Church, (me and everyone else) to pray for those whom we do not know. Then, trust in the Divine graces of our Lord JESUS CHRIST to see that the seed we plant finds root, nourishment, and one day to flower further spreading the Glory of Almighty GOD!

Thank you so much for your example. I already pray for others, whom I now, now I think I will pick someone who needs prayer of whom I am not acquainted. I pray my efforts meet with the same divine blessing your endeavor accomplished.

It's important to be able to laugh when things are so serious in our lives. I also pray for famous people to convert. What an example they can be to so many through their metier. I enjoyed Seinfeld also, for a time, until one of the later episodes when Elaine made some blatantly anti-Pro-life remarks. That ruined it for me. I must look Tom Leopold up. Since I am not a writer, I did not follow him, but now I am curious.

Hi Laura, I remember the Season 8 episode where everyone is arguing about pro-life Vs pro-choice. I didn't like parts of the script. But Elaine's boyfriend the moving man was GORGEOUS and he was pro-life!

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